With New York’s Help, a Center of Art and Protest to Get a New Home

Eight years after the rickety tenement that housed the Lower East Side cultural center ABC No Rio fell to the wrecking ball, a replacement is on the way.

A new four-story building will occupy the same lot on Rivington Street as the old center, which for decades symbolized the grit and defiance of the Lower East Side. No Rio cultivated political protest and the artistic avant-garde, with performances by Karen Finley and Beck, while also serving as a base for people to help prisoners and distribute free food.

The new structure will be built with the aid of the City of New York, which over the last several years has put $21 million toward the project, allocated through the Department of Cultural Affairs by the mayor’s office, the borough president’s office and City Council members.

That building will have a kitchen, a free computer lab and a zine library, just like its predecessor. It will also include environmentally conscious touches meant to insulate the building and conserve energy, including a roof garden and rows of plants along the facade.

The center’s relationship with the city, which for years was its landlord, has not always been smooth. In the 1990s, city officials tried to oust the group that ran the center. No Rio fought back, with protests and street theater.

But on Tuesday, at a ceremony as the construction project broke ground, the evolution in the relationship was clear.